Yesterday was Thanksgiving. I didn’t have time to post my annual Pilgrim’s Prayer as I was up to my arse in dinner preparation and then a bunch of celebration. Whew! I am grateful.

It was another Thursday and another Thanksgiving holiday in the USA. So the earth has not quite spun off her axis; some of her inhabitants may have but a lot of us are here today so let’s make the most of it.

I have shared the following bit of prose in one form or another for … I don’t know… decades maybe?

Occasionally I vary the wording but the sentiment is always the same, so without further ado, here we go… 

A Pilgrim’s Prayer

Once upon a time – a long, long time ago (before Black Friday) Thanksgiving was a celebration of harvest and a time to give thanks. Hence the name thanksgiving.

I don’t think the early pilgrims had a Super Walmart, a Sears or a Best Buy. They had never heard of an indie distributor called Smashwords (yikes, imagine how scary that might have sounded)

I’m sure they didn’t have the www to answer all of you questions or a beastly giant named Amazon— yet somehow they managed.

Can you imagine having to grow your own food and prepare it without the help of of a search engine like google? 

When did they have time? Where did they get their Stove Top stuffing and who canned the yams and plucked the turkeys? How did those crazy pilgrims do it?

I didn’t really know any of those pilgrims but I did see a John Wayne movie once. John knew a pilgrim when he saw one. He seemed to know a lot of pilgrims but that was a long time ago too.

I propose we are all pilgrims, each one of us on a journey of sorts. Our own personal pilgrimage…

Aren’t we are all looking for something? Be it a quest for self-confirmation, truth, a cure, enrichment, comfort, a friend, a lover, a job, a meal or a place to lay our weary head at the end of another day.

I believe life is a journey, or at least it should be. It would be terrible to think we were just flailing through this experience; killing time on this giant floating gumball while waiting for the next Black Friday specials.

I believe we all have one destination though we travel different roads and I trust that we have choices.

Hopefully we will choose well. On the occasion we do take a wrong turn [and we will from time to time] I pray we have enough sense and humility to stop and seek direction… to reassess our route and to be considerate in our voyage.

So here’s wishing all of you pilgrims a Happy, Happy Thanksgiving from the Hill house and may we all, whatever road we’re on, take time to look ahead, pause and bow our head in thanks.

My personal prayer:

I pray our good seeds of hope, humility, toil and courage produce abundantly; that love and kindness grow wild like the weeds of early spring – fruitful and undeterred.  And may our harvest be rich with wisdom and discernment.

Thank you Father, The Creator of all things, for this day and all it holds. Thank you for the days past, and Father forgive me for my wrong turns. Thank you for the day to come and guide me to make better choices. Thank you for all the pilgrims in my life – for those who’ve gone ahead and the ones that come behind and for those who read this prayer. And Thank You Father for the beacon that lights my way.

In Jesus name, Amen.

BTW Thanksgiving & John Wayne (A Pilgrim’s Prayer) is also in Getting Me Back (The Voices Within)